The Vampire Ghost
by Duck Life
Summary: Simon Lewis is trapped in another world, a world that is a thin layer over ours. Trapped in limbo, Simon struggles to find some solution, and to avenge himself. Simabelle, Clace. Please R&R! Character Death... sort of.
1. Chapter 1

It was a mistake to leave the Institute that night.

Isabelle had insisted that he stay- it was late, the city would be crawling with Downworlders and demons, and he so rarely was able to come inside the Institute (Jace had somehow found a way to manipulate the former church). "We could have a slumber party," she had insisted. "It would be fun, Simon."

"Izzy," he'd laughed, "I'm pretty sure that what we call a slumber party is more commonly referred to, at our age, as 'living in sin.'"

"Oh," she'd scoffed. "It's not like we were going to do anything."

"_Sure_," Jace had whispered to a laughing Clary in the corner of the room, to which Isabelle had pelted him with the couch pillow beside her.

"Well, bye, Izzy," Simon had said some time later, kissing her quickly on the lips and straightening up. "Clary, you coming?"

"Hm…" she had contemplated. "Luke made dinner for Mom, I think they'll probably want some privacy."

"We've got spare rooms here," Isabelle had suggested.

"Yeah, I guess I'll sleep here tonight," Clary had finalized after a few moments of thinking. "I should text Mom, though. Does anybody have a phone?"

Magnus had then sprung up and offered her his bedazzled iPhone. "Awesome!" Clary had exclaimed. "I didn't know you had an iPhone."

"Well that's because it's hard to see past the sequins and jewels," Jace had explained. Amidst the laughing (and the half-hearted inventing of a comeback, in Alec's case), Simon had slipped out onto the streets of New York.

It was only a few blocks to his home, but the streets were nearly empty, a somehow ominous sign. "It's fine," he mumbled, shaking himself. What did a vampire have to fear from human muggers? Even so, he hurried home, skirting around the corners of buildings without hesitating, each time wondering if he would crash into somebody. He felt foolish for not having taken his car, but he'd felt like there was just no point if everyone else was taking the subway.

He was so close. He could even see his house in the distance. Perhaps, if he hadn't stopped, he would have made it.

As it was, a familiar figure had stepped out of the shadows in an alley to his left. "Maia?" he gasped in surprise. Why wasn't she at the old police station with Luke and the wolves? At the sound of his voice, she turned in shock and horror. He shivered when he saw her terrified expression, and suddenly, he saw her that night in Luke's house, a couple of years ago, staring at him with a nearly identical expression when she felt his cold, vampire skin.

He immediately recognized the difference between the two images, though. Back then, Maia had been afraid _of_ him. Tonight, she was afraid _for _him. "Simon!" she yelled. "Simon, run! It's not safe!"

"What?" he replied, coming forward. Something was thundering through his blood, something stronger than adrenaline. He felt the urge to protect Maia, because clearly anything that put him at risk put her in the firing line, too.

"Simon, GO!" she screamed, but he didn't listen, running forward at inhuman speed.

"What's wrong?" he whispered, standing in front of her. She pushed him away, but fear made her weak, and he was no ordinary human. He tried to drag her away from the alley, but she was pushing against him, trying to get him out of the alley.

Something flashed through the air and ripped through the trembling werewolf girl, and there was blood everywhere, and then suddenly Simon could _feel _it, and then it was too late. The blood of the Children of the Moon and the blood of the Children of the Night mixed there on the sidewalk in a cruel imitation of Downworlder unity. Two pairs of eyes stared blankly up at the stars, faint and few through the filter of New York's light pollution. Two bodies lay crumpled on the ground as _something _disappeared into the black of the night.

It was a mistake to leave the Institute that night.


	2. Chapter 2

Pain.

It hurt more than he thought it would, and the shock of it only enhanced the agony. There was blackness, immense blackness. For the first time, Simon could _feel_ his body, feel the immense weight of it pulling him down, the thick, protective layers of skin wrapped around his muscles and bones, bones which for the first time since he'd become a vampire felt fragile and breakable. Broken. He could feel some kind of throbbing, torturous pulse within him, but he was baffled as to what it could be. He _had _no pulse, no heartbeat. What was in him that would make any kind of rhythm? And why couldn't he _see_?

He couldn't think, but thoughts seemed to materialize in front of him. Without any control, his thoughts were forming independently. Maia. Isabelle. Mom. Clary._ Isabelle. _

Maia was important, he knew, but without control of his mind he could not bring to himself the reason she was so important. Something, something… If only he could see!

And then he could see, and he realized it was not sight that he'd yearned for. All our lives, it is ingrained in us that _sight _brings the answers, but it is just a sense, a nerve reaction, not omnipotence. Seeing did not show him any reason or rhyme to clear up his mysteries. All he could see were bright lights, glaring off each other and shining in his face. The lights were glaringly brilliant, blinding him, but somehow, it was as if he saw the lights without eyes, as if they'd burned up his eyes with their intensity. He felt, rather than saw him.

Suddenly, Maia was there, grasping at him. Just as he felt the lights, he felt her sorrow, and for just a moment he felt a hand on his shoulder, a strong, rough hand that would pat him on the back and say, "Goodnight, son," and hug him when he had nightmares and then he took him to the Yankees game and the sun was shining on the stadium, too bright, much too bright, and then his father was gone, and Simon was falling.

It was a curious sort of falling- not as if he were simply freefalling, but as if he were being _pushed _down a deep, dark hole. It wasn't cold, as he might have expected the underground to be. It was hot, much too hot, heat that matched the bright lights, and yet there was no light here. It was pitch black and sweltering, without the comfortable warmth of the sun. Something wrenched painfully inside him, and for a moment Simon was brought back to his senses, clarity burning at the corners of his eyes, and he realized that he was being damned, _damned_! As he was dragged down, it hurt- there was too much tension. He was upset- it was perhaps his last moment of not being scorched _ever_, and it felt like he was caught in a game of tug-of-war. He would at least have liked to be absolutely comfortable before he went to Hell, but apparently that wasn't going to happen. And it made Simon absurdly disappointed.

It was then that he realized the tension meant something, something important- he was being pulled _upward_. Some force was yanking him down, but some other force was tugging him up with equivocal force. And, with a glimmer of hope, he realized that the upward force was winning.

His senses faded away once again, accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of peace. He could just register that the upward force took a form. As he ascended from the clutches of Satan, his savior became apparent, in her true form, wolfish eyes glinting, something human and something animal. His upward trip took much shorter than the downward one, he thought, if time had any meaning anymore. There were neither bright lights nor high temperatures. In fact, it seemed familiar. A constant, not an extremity. He wasn't moving anymore.

Maia disappeared back into the clouds. Something of Simon lay on the sidewalk next to his mangled body, more broken than ever before.

**A/N: Dedicated to Paramore. **


	3. Chapter 3

It is a strange and unhappy paradox, living forever and yet damned. The paradox is in that the living forever part is rarely true, and the damned part, always so. However, most of the demon-tainted ones live for longer than they would have, if they were human, and burning for eternity is actually worth the hundreds of years they had on earth. When the time comes to go down, most vampires are thankful for the abundance of years and acceptant of their fate. Simon was a vampire for two years.

True, those two years were amazing, enhanced with love in the form of Isabelle Lightwood, and with friendship in the form of Clary Fray. He could really say he was glad he hadn't died when he was sixteen. But he could not agree that he was satisfied to a forever of scorching at eighteen.

Simon Lewis was not in Hell at this moment, now. At least not literally. Strangely, everything felt absolutely clear. As if he were alive again. Less than a second had passed since a mysterious force had ripped him from life, but he already knew that he would never be alive again. He was dead now. Dead, but not gone.

It felt like a horror movie when Simon realized that he could see his body, torn open and blood spilling out on the ground. He wanted to throw up, but there was no nausea. He was not substantial- just a wisp sprawled out on the sidewalk like phosphorous egg yolks spilled out of a cracked and broken shell. Everything he perceived was how he would imagine it, because it was all in his head. He was neither cold nor hot, the sidewalk beneath him neither rough nor soft. As he lost his concentration, he drifted through it.

Drearily, he straightened up. He found that, if he thought about it, he could hold his feet on the ground and walk normally. He imagined that the ground below him was strong and impermeable to keep himself from falling through it again. Inventing the world he perceived around him, the ghost of Simon walked down the street, not knowing where he was going. He wondered if he would get tired. Did he need sleep anymore?

Izzy's face kept appearing in his mind, always blank and expressionless. He couldn't remember what her face had looked like when he last saw her. Probably happy. He couldn't remember what his last words to her had been. Most likely something inane and unimportant. There was time for frivolity when you live forever.

If he could have known that he would die tonight, that he would end up pretending to walk on a dark and empty street, bodiless, he would never have left Isabelle. He would have held onto her forever, for eternity.

Infinite time was beginning to seem much more real than he'd ever thought of it before. He could be burning _forever_. He was dead _forever_- death didn't change or become easier. Death was infinite. He might as well be walking on this dank road forever. He was nothing but a ghost.

But pondering the reality of infinity was just a way to avoid what he really needed to focus on, because once he did focus on the real issue he would have a purpose, and if he had a purpose he couldn't just keep walking and walking, he had to think, he had to remember all the painful truths, that Maia was dead, he was dead, something was out there killing. Simon was not alive, but he was sentient, real. He alone knew of the terrible force that had ripped apart his universe in seconds.

Philosophy rained down on him as he headed back to the scene of his mutilation. He was there soon- time was all in his mind. Nothing was real anymore.

Maia's and Simon's mangled remains lay spread out on the ground. Ghost Simon knelt on the side of his corpse. His glasses were askew. He tried to straighten them, but his hand passed right through them, and he came too close to his own dead face. He began to shake, and it took him a moment to realize that he was crying. Real or in his head, he couldn't tell and didn't care. Time was irrelevant, but the sun had risen and Simon was still sobbing ghost tears onto his former self. He left then- somebody would find the bodies, eventually. It didn't matter. The bodies were like time, they were meaningless. Maia was not lying on the ground, she was in the place with all the lights, and he was not lying next to her, but pacing through the streets of New York.

Simon, when he was living, had always tried to cheer himself up. He tried now, but all he could do was picture Casper the Friendly Ghost, and that only made him feel sick.

Simon the Pessimistic Ghost half-walked, half-glided toward the Institute, only for lack of a place to go. Perhaps seeing Isabelle would lift his spirits.

Although he had no spirits to lift- he _was _spirit.

He might have been going to the Institute or anywhere else. It didn't matter. He was just a misguided ghost.

**A/N: Again dedicated to Paramore, particularly the song "Misguided Ghosts."**


End file.
